This is a post continued from here…
The prayer ended (aren’t those pre-recorded TV prayers always awkward?!) I wandered over and turned off the TV and returned to my seat.
‘Tonight we are going to take a detour…’ I said. ‘Normally in Alpha we don’t have any thing confrontational or threatening or too churchy, but… as I was sitting watching that video I felt God saying some things to me about what’s happening in this room. Let me tell you what I felt he was saying’
Safe to say I had everyone’s attention.
I explained how God sometimes speaks to me thru impressions, I re-iterated that we didn’t normally do this stuff in Alpha, I told people I might have heard God wrong (because that happens too!…) Then after all the disclaimers and softeners I said what I was feeling.
“As I was watching the video I felt very strongly that someone who is here tonight wants to become a Christian. You may not get it all, but from what you have seen / heard / experienced so far you ‘want in’. I’m going to take a minute to pray and after that if you sense that person is you – that God has been speaking to you too then I just want you to say so and we’ll take it from there. Nothing freaky will happen (I think) we’ll just talk it thru’.
Deep breath…
Prayer…
‘Ok… so… does anyone feel like God has been speaking to them?’
Silence for what seemed like forever, but was really two seconds. Then directly across from me Mandy put her hand up in a ‘responding’ kind of way and was about to speak when Merilyn cut across her with a question. Kind of relevant, but also kind of diversionary.
We discovered two weeks later that both Mandy and Merilyn had serious demonic issues (it was very obvious – but that’s another story altogether!) and I now wonder if Merliyn’s question was a spiritual ploy to railroad the real issue.
Kate sat tight and said nothing – this was her first time at anything Christian so she had nothing to judge tonight by. Sam was rigid and seemed to be feeling some discomfort. He had grown up in a very churched family but was the ‘black sheep’ and my guess was that he was experiencing a mix of guilt and anger that he had been put on the spot like this.
Now – no one actually took a ‘leap of faith’ that night (that I know of) but what did happen was that my openess and willingness to put stuff out there seemed to give them some courage too. Our discussion got pretty frank.
You remember I said I wasn’t looking forward to watching the videos for the fourth time?
Well they weren’t getting into them either! Basically the summation of their comments were ‘we really enjoy hanging out and the discussion about faith and God, but can we just skip the videos and cut to the chase!’
I’ll finish this tomorrow.